Web3 and the state: The Indian state’s re-description of blockchain

This paper closely examines a discussion paper by the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog and a strategy paper by the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY) advocating non-financial use cases of blockchain in India. By noting the discursive shift from transparency to trust to adjustably transparent enacted in these two documents, and consequently the Indian state’s re-description of blockchain, the paper foregrounds how blockchain systems are being designated as “decentral” but have recentralizing effects where the state reinvents and re-establishes itself as an intermediary. This paper illustrates how discursive shifts concerning trust, transparency, (de)centralization and (dis)intermediation are crucial sites for investigating re-descriptions of emerging sociotechnical systems.